Blackness Commencing: Heart of an Ocean of Stars
by Novalon
Summary: Continuing from Impending Darkness... Riku, an Ensign of the Earth Federation Starship: Calnus, fights for a world he has never known. Please R/R!


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**Blackness Commencing**

A Kingdom Heart's fanfiction with a slight Star Ocean feel…

By: Novalon

Chapter 1: Diving deep

It had been several years…

He gazed down upon the darkening monoliths, large structures in an area devoid of light. The entire place had fallen to darkness long ago, and yet, he knew that this was the source of the corruption he sensed.

"The creatures had appeared about a decade ago… before too many casualties had been taken, we sealed up the area with Ionic force fields that we had successfully found to repel them… the numbers of deaths were still close to the casualties that happened in the very same city at the beginning of the millennium…"

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The mouse stepped forward, 

"See you on the other side Riku… we must heed the warning given to us."

And I followed, no having so much as a thought as to where we would end up. To my surprise, it was a world looking to fare with more life against the heartless, having the technology to suppress it…

But it took the power of my blade to stop it.

"No one knows of their true origins… some say they come from some random corner of the universe… some speculate they are from it's very center… the church has had a field day with explanations of past sins coming back to haunt us and mindless other clerigical babble…"

_Awakening on a beach, I found myself reminiscing of my long gone friends, who were most likely destroyed at the attack of darkness._

At a resort town known as Besaid, I stumbled off to find some help… perhaps a meal or two…

"We've studied the power your odd weapons possess, and it clearly affects the creatures much more than our Ionic energy does… you've clearly excelled in all physical and mental training, and you even seem to possess an odd blend of Heraldic powers, some that almost seem to rival my own…"

I was promptly nailed in the head with what looked to be a Blitzball. Staring at the circular object, I carefully scrutinized the design on it… matching perfectly the only other one I had previously seen.

And suddenly found myself staring at the gaping faces of both Wakka and Tidus, accompanied by a girl close to their age, with short brown hair, and billowing robes that adorned her body.

My friends (plus the girl who was named Yuna) explained where I was, and what had happened to the only other one I inquired of.

Young Selphie had since found her former hometown, much like the boys… a resort town called Trabia to the north of this island I was on… Hawaii.

"I admit, I found it hard to believe that ONE person could be capable of doing this kind of mission…"

Finding their home… yet I can't quite remember where my true home is… until I can find a way to travel and combat the heartless, I made this gigantic world known as Earth my home…

As far as finding a ship was concerned, that part seemed easy enough for me… I enlisted in what was known as the Junior Academy of the Earth Federation: A training program for teenagers who wanted to fly the stars while taking part in the federation.

Since the program was based on obtaining military status, it was rather nice to find that the program itself had no costs… which was perfect considering the fact that I had nothing close to the currency held by this planet…

"And with you being of quite a social standing… I can't believe that you would even consider doing something like this…"

At least at that point, until I found my gold pieces stashed in the bag of items I carried, and obtained a rather large sum of currency due to the fact that gold was evidently becoming more and more of a commodity on the planet.

"You are hard pressed though… with you being my son's age, I don't find THAT uncommon…"

To make a long story short, I worked my way to an Ensign of the Earth Federation, along the way I made good friends with this boy named Claude C. Kenni… a light shines in his eyes that I recognized in Sora, and I found he was just as easy to get along with…

"And as for backup… we would send your… *ahem* friend, but it seems the government's scientists still want to run tests… safe tests mind you, he is quite sentient… and figure out exactly what kind of species he is…"

_And Mickey had landed in some place called "The Oval Office" and met the President of said government._

He also seemed to recall that the man behind the desk was involved in some odd business with one of his interns… something he didn't go into much detail, only that it seemed to be much more than just a simple dictation of a memo… of course, I'm no innocent child, that much had been true since I met the heartless…

"Ensign… I'm not saying that you can't do this… but the chances of your survival are slim to none… if you even managed to come back alive, with sufficient data of the creatures_, _and data proving this 'keyhole' theory of yours… let's just say the results would be better than any test of rank that you would ever need to do…"

Riku, dressed in black Earth Federation Special Ops gear, faced the man speaking to him, nodding his head.

"I understand the risks and rewards, Commodore… from what I've read of you, I've heard that you've had your share of risks and rewards as well…"

The aging man nodded, bringing his right hand up to his head, his slanted fingers arching just above the eyebrow.

"Good luck, and Godspeed, Ensign Atriedes."

Riku returned the salute.

"I will succeed, Commodore Kenni."

Stepping onto the teleportation platform, he placed a blindfold on his head… with his heraldic training, the object successfully aided him in using spectral sight to "see" the energy emanations of the heartless.

As the energies enveloped him and dispersed, he sensed he was already in the city. Wasting no time, he summoned his two keyblades…

Only to find that one of his fears came true… the Ionic field could perhaps disturb the calling of the weapons, he sensed one of them had appeared… somewhere.

He wasted no time, as soon as he felt emanations, he used his heightened heraldic abilities to scale the closest building he could find… which was found to be rather close to the keyhole… the small automatic scanner attached to his belt gave off high energy readings.

It was here… the only question was: how could he lock it?

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He looked up, grunting as he noticed that rain was beginning to fall. Bringing his gaze back to a position ahead of him, he grimaced as he realized that his target was far off.

"Why couldn't that damned old man send me through the shield anywhere closer to the damned keyhole?!"

He didn't care about interference, he didn't care about complications… he cared about saving lives, saving planets…

Saving his friends…

He knew that where his target was found, that his true friend might surely not be far off…

_All the times we competed on the beach… it grew into an everlasting friendship… but…_

His gaze followed to an interesting groove in the road, cut by a familiar object rising from the ground.

"A keyblade!"

He picked it up, reading the word on the side:

_Masamune._

It's shape bore a resemblance to the Oblivion keyblade, which was in his possession, though he never used it in battle.

He picked it up, suddenly finding that it's energy was trying to find it's owner…

He followed the pull of the energy to a city square, in front of a large building… he noticed a large heart symbol tracing it's way over the ground.

Bringing both keyblades to a defensive position, he readied himself to fight, as he also had training in fighting with dual weapons. As the first of the demonic creatures appeared, he began his work.

Launching into a fury of swift and precise martial arts motions, he turned the nearest targets to dust, spinning around and immediately becoming a whirlwind of fury. He leapt into the air, throwing his own Keyblade like a boomerang, swiftly cutting through the closing enemies. He called it's energy back, throwing his glance upward, where he saw a human form standing on top of the building.

It was his friend, Riku. He was sure of it, the emanations of magical energy made it as such. He grinned before launching himself to the base of the massive building, and began to scale it in a way that seemed superhuman…

He ran up the side of the building, cutting at heartless that appeared before him, racing as fast as he could towards his friend.

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Riku stared at the carnage below him, silently thanking the fact that Sora decided to play the part of the hero once again. He stood at the edge of the massive structure, commenting on the fact that it was this building that stood as a commemoration to lives lost sometime long ago on this planet… probably that event that had many casualties… though he noticed rubble of structures that once stood taller far into the distance, destruction caused by the heartless… he was sure of it…

He had a thought… Sora was racing at him with what looked like his one summoned keyblade… what if he sped up the meeting?

Shaking his head with a grin, he leapt off the very top…

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Sora raced with a speed that would make Olympic sprinters blush.

Riku fell with a grace that would make Olympic divers blush.

And thus in the middle, they met, and Riku snatched up the blade that was passed to him. Falling down, he caused the beasts rushing up to explode upon contact with the assistance of the Masamune.

And Sora back flipped with the skill of Jackie Chan mixed with a few moves that could have only been pulled off in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

In other words, he landed on the ground without a scratch from a 100 story drop… it was a statistical impossibility, not to mention it broke every law of physics that had previously been proven.

As the massive army of heartless was systematically being exterminated, the windows of the building they previously used for fancy acrobatics suddenly merged together, forming the mother of all keyholes which made up the entire side of the building.

And Riku thought the keyhole at Kingdom Hearts was huge… evidently the heartless wanted to make a full scale invasion on this planet… it's almost as if the power on it was more than the usual power a heartless was after…

As the army of the enemy dwindled, the darkness covering the city slowly began to grow brighter, causing confusion to those patiently waiting outside of the ionic barrier.

The army had numbered in the hundreds of thousands, far bigger than what made up the supposed core of the universe… obviously the keyblade masters had much to learn, that Kingdom Hearts had only made up that insignificant corner… that far many other quadrants of the known universe needed tending to…

It was a burden that some would say was too large to be set on the shoulders of a few…

Riku knew much, from the story that Mickey had told him, of how to keep problems like this from surfacing again… it would take an army to get rid of it, and he knew exactly whose help he would need… especially from the position he would obtain after completing his task.

With the last of the heartless army destroyed, the two friends looked into each other's eyes, silently telling the other that this job must be finished…

And the two worked their magic, calling upon the full power of their essence and sending it outwards in an exuberant beam of heavenly light, which flowed from the very tips of their blades and grew to envelop the very heart of the planet…

With a sound that resounded for many hundreds of miles, the hole was locked… and the planet forever rescued from the power of darkness…

But as the wielders of the keyblades knew, while they used their keyblades for support, that their work had only begun… and this was just a taste of the blackness that had commenced to steal the hearts of all life in the universe…

Author's Note: Well, if you've been following the story of Impending Darkness, you know that this was long in appearing. Though I hope I haven't let any of my (few) loyal readers down, I do assure that my writing will not stop, though perhaps certain stories will be put off. I do hope that the number of reviews that come in for all my stories will perhaps give me the perseverance to write… and to please. If it sucks: tell me, if you hate it: tell me, if you hate me: go to hell. It's as simple as that!


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